


Inside Out: Being Bipolar

by shnuffeluv



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 16:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5297459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/pseuds/shnuffeluv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little drabbles into the life of someone self-dxed with bipolar disorder, interpreted through the mechanics of Inside Out, ignoring the gaping plotholes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Sadness! You've been at the controls for at least a month! It's my turn!" Joy whined.

Sadness looked over her shoulder at Joy and frowned. "But I'm the one who calls the shots, and I'm not done!"

Joy rolled her eyes and pushed Sadness away. "You and Disgust have had long enough turns already. It's our turn."

E woke up and smiled. She was feeling good, for the first time in a long time.

Joy looked at Sadness and grinned. "See? She's glad to be happy."

"But you know what happens when she's happy...she crashes within the month. And then I come back for my turn. And she doesn't like it when she crashes."

Joy waved Sadness off. "I'm gonna make the most of my short time so that she doesn't feel so bad this time."

Fear and Anger ran to the controls, bowling over Disgust in their frenzy to get there. "There are going to be a lot of people at school today, we're going to be crushed!" Fear screamed.

"B had better not start breathing down our neck like he used to when we were younger, I'll slug him! And we took karate!" Anger exclaimed.

"Guys, guys, relax! E's gonna be just fine! And you know why? It's because I'm in control!" Joy soothed. "Let's get today started!"


	2. Chapter 2

"We're at school!" Joy announced.

"Finally! I'm pretty sure our tailbone shattered on the bus!" Anger grumbled.

"There's so many people!" Fear screamed. "We're going to die!"

E looked around, her head held high. She felt like she could take on the world. Nothing could hurt her, or at least, she felt that way.

"Guys, guys, guys! Calm down! We only have 2 weeks to make her happy, we have to make the most of it!" Joy exclaimed.

Anger banged on the controls. "Her period's coming, I can tell!"

"We'll bleed to death!" Fear wailed.

"Oh yeah? How? We've been through this for 3 years, now, Fear. We'll be fine!" Joy sighed. She pressed several buttons. "Let's go to the library to read something, huh? How about that?"

Sadness leaned over on the couch and said, "You know what happens if a character dies..."

"Shut up, Sadness!" Joy yelled. "It's not your turn!"

"...Yet." Sadness muttered. "It will be within a few days."


	3. Chapter 3

"It was a mistake," E muttered. "It was a mistake reading that in English. My heart is gone. Shattered. Completely."

Joy pouted as Sadness worked all the controls. "I barely got 5 days!" she whined.

Sadness shrugged. "I told you she'd crash."

Disgust walked up. "Oh my gosh, are we crying? We are so disgusting and stupid!" she sighed. "Honestly we are we here? To make other people better about themselves?"

Sadness flopped onto the controls. "I don't know. We're not much good at anything."

Joy looked up. "Don't be ridiculous! We're great at writing!"

Disgust scoffed. "Sure. And that's going to be useful, when? You can't make a job from it anymore! It's a useless skill!"

Joy frowned. "It is not!"

Sadness sighed. "Disgust is right, Joy. We're not good at anything. We'd be better off dead, or somewhere where no one can find us."

Joy looked at Sadness, concerned. "You can't just die! What about publishing that book? We can't know we're useless until we put ourselves out there! We have to at least try!"

Sadness sighed. "Fine. We'll wait until the book publishes."

Disgust sighed. "If someone else doesn't kill us by then. We're so pathetic, it wouldn't be hard."

Joy groaned.


	4. Chapter 4

Fear sat in a ball under the control pannel. "Danger."

"Where?" Sadness asked.

"DANGER. Dangerdangerdangerdangerdanger--" Fear repeated.

"Stop it! Where is the danger, how do I get us out of it?" Disgust exclaimed.

"They're coming to get us. They'll find us, and they'll kill us! We'll be 6 feet under by the end of the day!"

"Who is 'they'?!?!" Disgust yelled.

"You'll be crushed, E. Everyone is yelling at you and mad at you and they just want to get rid of you. They'll crush you as soon as you're in their grasp!" Fear yelled at the console.

"Who is they?! Why?! What is this?!" Anger yelled, confused, and as always, angry that he wasn't in the loop.

"They  **will**  kill you," Fear said at the console, patting in consolingly.

 _...I hate it when you're right..._  a voice carried though E's head.

"Was that...?" Joy asked in shock.

"That was her." Sadness said with conviction, "That was E."

E sat trembling in her seat, gripping her pencil, hands clapped over her ears to block out the sound.  _I hate it when you're right,_  she thought miserably.


	5. Chapter 5

Sadness is crying at the controls. Joy is sitting with a notebook and a pencil in the bathroom. "What's the matter  _this_  time?" she sighs.

Sadness flops on the controls and looks at Joy. "E-e-everyth-th-th-thing!"

Joy rolls her eyes. "Come on, how bad can it be?"

"All our friends hate us," Sadness mumbled.

"No they don't!"

"We suck at writing..."

"Tell that to the commenters!"

"We're failing school!"

"Since when is a B a failing grade?"

"Since we joined a super-competitive school designed to run us into the ground."

Joy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, you're getting off those controls right  _now._ "

Disgust stopped Joy in her tracks. "And where do you think you're going?"

"Sadness is destroying us! At this point we'll be dead by the end of the year!"

Sadness looked over. "That's be easier, wouldn't it? The fake good feelings in between this, wouldn't it be easier if it all...stopped?"

"Sadness! Don't say things like that!"

Sadness turned away to look out at what E was seeing.

"I need to get us to a hospital if you're not going to take that back!"

"Dad won't let us," Sadness lamented.

Joy growled. "Then let  _me_  take charge! You suck at it!"

"And you're any better?!" Sadness growled. "You send her into states where she feels like she could take on a moving car, and ramp up her anxiety to unbelievable levels, because you make her notice everything! You hurt her more than I do!"

Joy took a step back. "I'm trying to make her feel better, unlike  _you! You just make her worse!"_

 _"Then why does she always feel better after she cries?!"_  Sadness yelled.  _"I_ make her better, not  _you!"_

Joy growled and Anger could be heard chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" in the background.

* * *

E was lying in bed, crying. She just wanted this to stop. She wanted it  _all_  to stop.


	6. Chapter 6

"Unstable. That's what we are," Joy called from the manuals.

Sadness looked over at Joy and sighed. "Well, yeah. But if we weren't slightly unstable, we wouldn't be human, would we?"

Joy sighed. "Not the normal unstable, Sadness.  _Legitamately unstable_. You and I fighting--that's not supposed to happen to this extreme. It borders--"

"Bipolar disorder?" Sadness filled in. "Bipolar Type 2 has severe depression-me-and hypomania-you, but watered down a bit."

Joy stood up. "So you know this is a problem!"

"But I'm in charge, and what I say, goes. And I'm not giving up my spot without a fight. So we're gonna live with it."

"Sadness, we're not equipped to deal with this sort of thing on our own!"

Sadness shrugged. "Well, we'll learn."

"That's not how it works! We can't just learn on our own, that's how we couldn't play those piano songs correctly for weeks!"

Sadness looked at the screen and frowned. "It will. It has to."


	7. Chapter 7

Joy and Sadness were fighting for the controls when the doors to headquarters opened and in walked in a white circle with arms, legs, and a dent going right through the middle of it. "Woah, woah, woah!" it yelled. "What is going on here?!"

Joy and Sadness stopped to look at the newcomer. "Who are  _you?"_  Sadness asked.

"I'm Ativan! I'm medication, made to help you guys get along!"

Another more oblong medication walked in behind it. "I'm Lexipro, and Ativan here and I are going to make sure that you all don't run rampant across the controls. Joy?"

Joy ran over. "Yeah?"

"You're in charge," Lexipro said. "Sadness has had enough control."

Joy squealed and ran to the controls, Ativan trying to encourage her.

"You're making E high!" Sadness protested. "She's just gonna ride the high! Like she rides your mania! It's no better!"

Lexipro shushed her. "Now, now. Be nice. Or we'll have to force you to be quiet."


	8. Chapter 8

Sadness sat on the couch by the controls, sighing, and getting up to go to the controls, touch a few buttons, and then go back to her seat where she was reading about different mental disorders. The medications weren't letting her have any control. She touched the controls and the console went blue. Joy jumped back from it like it might be contagious. "SADNESS!" she exclaimed.

"I didn't do anything except what I was supposed to be doing! Go talk to Lexipro if you're concerned, Ativan left a while ago."

Lexipro came over and grunted at the controls, touching them and turning the deep blue a more robin's egg color, shrugged, and disappeared.

"The medication isn't working," Joy complained.

"Figures," Sadness sighed.

"Hey, at least we got through the summer!" Joy explained.

"Yay, our medication stops working,  _right before school,_ " Sadness sighed.

Joy rolled her eyes and pushed some buttons. "We're talking to Mom."


	9. Chapter 9

The next medication was worse. Symbalta didn't even care enough to fix the controls, and they were permanently a blue-green color. Sadness lamented about how they'd be better off dead often. It only took Joy 3 days to tell their mom about the dangers of the new medication. It was soon switched, along with their diagnosis. "Well, it's official! We don't have an anxiety disorder, we have a mood disorder," Joy said. "At least we're finally getting the right treatment!"

"We're insane," Sadness said quietly. "You read the article, you know there's no cure for this sort of thing. We'll need to be medicated for the rest of our lives!"

"You don't know that!" Joy protested. "Chin up! This medication will work for sure!"

Sadness sighed and leaned on the controls.

Joy rolled her eyes and continued to brighten up headquarters.


	10. Chapter 10

The new medication appeared in HQ quickly. "Hi, everyone, I'm Abilify," they said. "I'm going to be making sure all of you get along with each other."

Joy cheered. "Hey! Welcome! DO I get to be at the controls again?! Sadness has been turning E a little...dark lately."

Abilify motioned to the controls. Joy cheered, but Abilify held her back. "Hold on, now. You're not going to be the only one working there, you know."

Joy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Abilify said, grabbing Sadness by the hand, "You're going to be working the controls  _with_  Sadness."

"What?!" Joy asked. "Are you insane?! Sadness just makes E want to kill herself!"

"Trust me," Abilify said, "You'll learn to like it this way."

Joy looked at Sadness uncertainly, and started working the controls while Sadness pressed a few buttons, negating the happiness Joy was trying to instill. "She's messing up my signals!" Joy complained.

"No, I'm not," Sadness protested. "I'm muting them. Don't you realize you're giving her hypomania?"

"Am not! I'm making her happy!"

Abilify looked between the two and sighed. This was going to take a little while of explaining.


End file.
